Raising Capable Kids in a Fast-Changing World | Gary Surdam | Coffeez with Joe Shalaby
1/2/202640 min
Most conversations about education focus on systems.
This one focuses on people.
In this episode of Coffeez for Closers, Joe sits down with Gary Surdam, an international educator, entrepreneur, and founder of Bright Start Ed-Tech and the Illoominate platform.
Gary has spent decades inside classrooms, universities, and education systems around the world. But what shaped his mission most wasn’t policy or curriculum — it was watching how confidence, self-esteem, and connection determine whether a child actually succeeds.
This conversation explores:
• Why parents are still the most influential teachers in a chil...
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Speaker 10:48
How did you get your website to look like that? Mine's so basic. Thanks. I just used Wix Harmony. Sounds fancy. What's that? It's Wix's AI website builder. You can just tell it what you want, and it builds you a whole site. So it's like vibe coding a website? Exactly, but even better because you can still click and edit anything by hand. You don't have to use prompts for everything. Oh, that's neat. Yeah. Try it for free at wix.com/harmony.
Joe Shalaby· Host1:18
[upbeat music] What's up, everybody? Welcome to another episode of Coffees for Closers. Today, we are sitting down with Gary Surdam, the founder and CEO of the Illuminate app, an application